California Biographies
Mendocino and Lake Counties, California
Transcribed by Peggy Hooper
This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm
Source:
History of Mendocino and Lake Counties, California
With Biographical Sketches
History by Aurelius O. Carpenter And Percy H. Millberry
Illustrated, Complete In One Volume
Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, California, 1914
ERNEST ENDERLIN.� An industry which is still in the incipient stage
in Lake county, the raising of milk goats and production of goats' milk, has
a most able advocate in the person of Ernest Enderlin, now a resident of
Lower Lake, where he has been settled since 1905. Mr. Enderlin is a native
of Baden, Germany, born December 25, 1879. When he was four years old
his parents brought their family to America, arriving at San Francisco, Cal.,
about 1883-84 � father, mother and eight children. The parents are residents
of the Lower Lake precinct in Lake county, having a forty-acre farm in Little
High valley, at Spruce Grove. Mr. Enderlin is now sixty-eight years old,
Mrs. Enderlin sixty-four. Of their family, Frieda (a half sister of the rest)
is now the wife of Christian Eskelson, of San Mateo, Cal., proprietor of a
creamery; Louise is married to E. B. Hinton, clerk in a mercantile establish-
ment at Chico, Cal. ; Mary Magdalena is the wife of A. P. Mefford, a farmer,
of Calistoga; Ernest is next in the family; Henry is a farmer, operating the
Steinhart ranch ; Sophia is the wife of Ralph Hopper, of Lower Lake ; Hattie
is the wife of Jens Nielson, a farmer at Ukiah, Mendocino county; George is
employed on the farm belonging to the State Agricultural College at
Davis, Cal.
Ernest Enderlin attended school in San Francisco, and when a youth
began a four years' apprenticeship to the trade of machinist in the shops of
the Pacific Rolling Mills (now the Risden Iron Works) in that city. Mean-
while, however, when seventeen years old, he came to Lake county and for
two years was located at Lower Lake, returning to San Francisco to finish
his apprenticeship. Subsequently he was employed as a machinist at the Dow
Pump Works, Eagle Gas Engine Company and United Iron Works at Oak-
land, continuing thus until a few years after his marriage. In 1905 he re-
turned to Lower Lake and bought his present home in the western part of
the town, having between three and four acres of ground and a comfortable
house. Of late years he has done little at his trade, being engaged principally
as a professional nurse, in which work he has proved very successful, his
congenial personality and skillful attention winning the highest praise from
all who have had need of his services.
Some time ago Mr. Enderlin began to take an interest in the subject of
producing goats' milk, which at the present time has a market value of fifty
cents per quart, being rich in the butter fats which are so nutritive and easy
of digestion. The difficulty at present in this country is to get stock goats
for breeding purposes, of the milk varieties, as the government has stringent
quarantine regulations against the foot-mouth disease, barring all suspicious
importations. There is no disease among the goats in Lake county, but the
number is limited. For the last three years Mr. Enderlin has given attention
particularly to the breeding of his herd, and he now has fifteen head of high-
grade Toggenburg-Saanen milk goats. Milk goats are worth from twenty-
five dollars to seventy-five dollars apiece, and a good animal yields from two
to four quarts of milk daily. Mr. Enderlin estimates that there is probably
about one hundred thousand acres of unoccupied brush land in Lake county
which would furnish proper pasture for goats, and when eaten down by them
could easily be prepared for orcharding, ready for the planting of apple, pear
and olive trees, or vineyards. The industry has gigantic possibilities in the
county. Condensed goat milk would solve the perplexing question of infant
feeding in many a community, and condensing factories, Roquefort cheese
factories and even sanitariums where invalids, especially dyspeptics, could be
benefited by the milk diet, are some of the features which the development
of this business might bring out. Mr. Enderlin has given considerable time
to the study of this problem, and he has done much writing on the subject,
contributing articles to live stock and agricultural papers, including the Goat
Journal. He is local correspondent for the Lake County Bee and the Kelsey-
ville Sun, as well as other papers, and he is doing his best to start a movement
in favor of the project which he feels would add to the riches of the county
and bring benefit to many, from the standpoint of health as well as financial
rewards.
When twenty-two years old Mr. Enderlin was married in San Francisco
to Miss Eva Marie Rousseau, and they have had six children, all of whom are
vet at home, namely: Blanche, Evelyn, Rousseau, Milton, Harold and
Euvelle. Mr. Enderlin is well known in the local fraternal bodies, being a
member of the Lower Lake Blue Lodge and a Master Mason, and a past
grand of Clear Lake Lodge. No. 130. I. O. O. F., of Lower Lake.